The Sacrifice (15 page)

“I see you have taken care of the girl. And your mother,” Two-voices said. He squeezed his wife closer to him. “I trust you have also taken care of the fields. How are the crops?”

“Quite good,” Wolfstar said.

“Oh, they are looking wonderful,” the girl chimed in, walking alongside. “Almost everyone's corn is in the milk, and most of the flat beans are ready for picking. The sun shone hot here nearly every day you were gone, and Wolfstar brought water—” She stopped speaking as she realized she was alone. She turned to look back and saw Two-voices standing on the hillside, clutching his son's and wife's shoulders, glaring.

“What goes on here in my absence?” he demanded.

Her-corn-says-so said softly, “It's all right, old man.” But her face looked anxious.

“She is quick with our language,” Wolfstar said. “She could not help picking it up.”

“She is carrying a bow,” Two-voices snapped. “And a quiverful of arrows.”

“She has not run away,” Wolfstar said disrespectfully. “She might have run away many times, but she hasn't.”

“This is true,” Her-corn-says-so agreed.

Two-voices was scowling.

The girl looked from one family member to another, and finally, her eyes meeting the old man's, she said earnestly, “I want to stay.”

Two-voices grunted his disapproval.

“It's all right, old man,” Her-corn-says-so said again, and pressed him to walk on. He allowed her to lead him down the hill to the lodge, but the matter seemed far from settled.

*   *   *

She had never seen such abundance. All along the hillside, women scraped at buffalo hides stretched out on pegs. One could barely walk between all the drying racks sagging with buffalo strips and pumpkin rings, and the beans spread underfoot. Popping noises filled the air as the beans dried in the sun. The mouth-watering aroma of new corn roasting wafted across the prairie from dozens of pits dotting the countryside.

Since the return of the buffalo hunters, Wolfstar seemed under great strain. Two-voices did not hide his disapproval of his son's treatment of their Apsaalooka captive, and although he did not interfere, he and Wolfstar hardly spoke to each other. When the girl talked to Wolfstar, he seemed far away. He had important things on his mind, he said, preparing for his responsibilities in the ceremony.

The day of the ceremony, the Morning Star rose with a red ring around it. At their meal of tiny boiled pumpkins everyone was tense. There was none of the usual joking. Her-corn-says-so did not speak a word, and the silence between Wolfstar and Two-voices was like screaming.

“Perhaps you should try to speak to your father about me,” the girl suggested to Wolfstar later as they spread out with a group of boys and men hunting for wood to stoke the roasting fires.

Wolfstar was constantly squinting, though the sun was hidden behind a cloud bank. As they combed the tall grass he would pick up a stick of wood, and then a few steps later absently toss it away. “What could I say,” he murmured.

She avoided looking at him. “You could tell him that I don't have a real home in my own village. This could be my village now.”

Wolfstar nodded, but he seemed not to be listening.

“So you wouldn't have to lose the Wolf Star bundle to another village,” she explained. “And I have no family to provide for.”

He turned toward her, blinking. “What?”

“And I'd work, I'd work hard. I'm a good hunter. But I could learn women's work if you want me to.”

“Stop,” Wolfstar said angrily. “Stop talking that way.”

She stepped toward him. “But—you do care for me?”

“What does it matter?” He plucked a branch from where it leaned against a yucca plant.

“Wolfstar, you have picked that stick up three times. What's wrong with you?”

He flung the branch away. “I need to be alone,” he snapped.

Angrily, she stalked off. She would go visit Bull. Surely Wolfstar did care for her, but he seemed to have more responsibilities than she knew. She wondered if there was truly no answer to this problem. She picked a few stray cobs of sweet corn along the path to the river. The water was so low from the hot summer that by leaping from one sandbar to another she crossed without wetting her feet. She crouched to scoop mud from the riverbed into her skirt, and called a greeting to the string of boys sitting on the other bank, watching the horses, but strangely, they only stared at her. She shrugged off their rudeness and walked out onto the plain where the horses were grazing.

While Bull munched at the corncobs, she soothed his saddle sores with mud and complained to him about Wolfstar. She spent the whole morning and much of the afternoon among the horses, packing up the raw spots on every one that would let her near.

“That will keep the flies off,” she said to a paint mare, wiping the last of the mud off her hands onto the long grass. A leather thong trailing from under the mare's hoof caught her eye. It ran to a little yellow buckskin bag. Wolfstar's medicine bundle, she realized, and pushed the mare's foreleg off it.

She splashed through the river and walked up the footpath toward the village. Almost everyone was outside, shucking corn or tanning hides or gathering wood. They stopped talking and averted their eyes as she passed. Her cheeks burned. Did the whole village know, then, how she had thrown herself at Wolfstar?

Of Wolfstar there was no sign. He must be inside. She walked around to the back of their lodge. She swung a leg up to the edge of the roof, hoisted herself up, and clambered to the top of the dome. Just as she was about to call to him down the smoke hole, she heard Two-voices saying, “A boy of your age cannot help feeling—I should not have placed such a responsibility on you. I pray you have not touched her.”

She jerked her head back from the opening and flattened herself against the dirt. She knew these words were not meant for her ears, but she could not turn away.

“I have not,” said Wolfstar.

“If you
have
touched her, I cannot save you,” Two-voices said severely. “If the Morning Star decides to take you instead, there is nothing anyone can do.”

“I have not touched her, Father,” Wolfstar insisted.

“My son, it hurts me not to trust you.”

“I gave up Hummingbird-in-her-hair,” Wolfstar said coldly. “What more proof of my allegiance do you require?”

“I am warning you,” Two-voices said in a way that sliced up the girl's spine. “Do not try anything foolish. She
will
be at the ceremony tonight. I know how painful it is for you. None of us
wants
to do it, but we must! Remember your people. The Morning Star must have the blood of that girl's heart, no matter what feelings you have for her.”

Over the pounding in her ears, she heard Wolfstar scoff, “Feelings for her? What feelings? I have done only what you taught me: be kind to her, keep her happy and ignorant of her fate so that she may be led through the ceremony willingly when the time comes. I think I have done my task well.” His voice rang angrily through the lodge's rafters. “Yet you suggest I have betrayed you, betrayed my people!”

There was a long silence, broken only by the old man's sigh.

“Son…”

“Father, she will be at the ceremony tonight,” Wolfstar said in a tender voice.

She was nearly sliding off the roof, but she did not care. Nothing mattered. Her heart had already been ripped from her breast.

21

There was only darkness in her now. Her old friend anger, who had led the fight to survive so many times before, guided her footsteps hurriedly away from the lodge. She must not be seen there; she must not raise any suspicion that she had overheard. Hastily she struggled to weigh her situation. There was no time to worry about food or even weapons. She had the clothes she was wearing, and she had freedom enough to go to the horses—no one would worry at seeing her among them. If she could linger in the pasture until dusk, she might not be seen slipping away. If only the ceremony did not begin before then! The sky was now gray as slate, so there would be no light tonight to follow her by. But what of her grizzly robe? She no longer took it everywhere, and this morning she had left it inside the lodge.

Aching, she looked back at the earthen dome. If she went back in the heat of the afternoon to fetch her robe, they would know something was amiss. And she could not face Wolfstar without revealing herself.

With tremendous effort she turned down the path to the river. As she strode along, she felt the ear pendant swinging against the side of her throat and ached to rip it out. But she did not dare, not until she was out of sight.

“Danger,” Wolfstar called from the head of the path. She started violently and was afraid she had given herself away, but he was too far from her to notice. He trotted down to her, a loaded saddlebag bouncing from his shoulder and another large pack dragging behind him.

“I want to apologize for the way I acted earlier,” he said. “You were right. I have been a coward. I won't be any longer.” He adjusted his grip on his burdens, clenching them so that his knuckles whitened. “I will speak to my father tonight, after the ceremony.”

His voice sounded so warm and safe, as always. Yes, he had done his task well. She clutched her wrist to stop herself from trying to crush his throat.

“Please don't be angry with me,” Wolfstar said. “I am sorry.”

She could not bear to see the necklace she had given him draped over his black-and-green-beaded ceremonial shirt.

“Here,” she said abruptly, holding out his medicine bag. “Look what I found.”

“Oh!” He seemed stunned, and looked up with real gratitude. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

“It's all right, old man,” she forced out, parodying Her-corn-says-so.

Briefly Wolfstar's lips parted in an unreal smile. “You are wanted in the lodge,” he said. “My mother and my aunt have grown more corn than they can shuck.”

She swallowed hard. She had never before been asked to work; they must want to keep her under watch until the ceremony. “I was going out to take care of the horses,” she said as evenly as she could.

“My father has just sent me to see about one of his horses. I'll look after the others, too.”

“I don't think…”

Wolfstar smiled knowingly. “Don't worry. I'll take good care of Bull for you.”

“No—” she said, groping. When Wolfstar reached the pasture he would see the mud already on their backs and know she had lied. “You don't have to,” she said. “I already plastered them up earlier; I just wanted to see … Sometimes the mud cracks off.”

“You certainly care a lot about those beasts,” Wolfstar said. “I'll tend them for you.”

There was nothing to do but walk back up the path, with Wolfstar watching her, and go to help the women with their corn.

*   *   *

As she tore off husk after blackened husk from the roasted ears, and then joined in cutting the kernels off the cobs row by row, time seemed to drag endlessly, yet race. It seemed the moment would never come when she could escape. Yet the moment of her death was hurtling toward her as if she were falling off a cliff.

The lodge grew ominously dark, but whether from the oncoming dusk or a gathering storm she could not judge. She thought she heard thunder in the distance. Two-voices sat on his bed against the wall, where in the dim light she could barely see him; but she knew he was watching her.

After repeating the words over and over in her head until she thought she could say them naturally, she asked, “How much longer until the ceremony?”

A shadow crossed every face in the circle, and suddenly she realized that she was the only person in the village who had not known all along that she was to be sacrificed.

“Not long,” Her-corn-says-so said without a hint of her feelings.

Wolfstar appeared in the passageway.

Her-corn-says-so laid her clamshell blade on the earthen floor. “Now,” she said.

*   *   *

A raindrop blew against her face as they walked toward Dreamer's lodge, and at her feet more drops began splashing into the dust. Under the calfskin dress her body was slick with sweat. In desperation, she tried to walk slowly. Wolfstar walked on her left, Two-voices on her right, and the rest of the family behind her. Ahead, the whole village was gathering outside Dreamer's lodge. All the men and boys, even toddlers, carried bow and quiver. Many people had climbed onto the dome's roof and were ripping up the sod so they could watch through holes.

The horses had been driven into the village against the impending storm, and on the edge of the herd milled the swift little buckskin no more than twenty paces from her grasp. But though over that short distance she might out-race the Pawnee, she could never outrace their arrows.

The entrance tunnel gaped before her. Inside the lodge a fire burned, and at the end of the passageway stood the priest, his false smile seeming to welcome her.

Her only chance was to convince them she knew nothing, to submit to the ceremony and watch for an opportunity to escape.

She stepped into the tunnel.

22

The faces of the priest, Dreamer, and several assistants glowed red in the light of the embers, and their long shadows writhed over the dome's walls above the heads of the seated figures filling the lodge. Dimly lit faces watched through jagged holes in the roof, and a dozen more crowded the smoke hole, deathly somber. There was no sound but the whisper of the fire and the groan of faraway thunder.

Wolfstar bade her sit down on one of two buckskin cushions near the fire pit, and sat beside her on the other. Most of the remaining villagers squeezed in behind them on the floor, stepping over four carefully laid out circles of tiny breathfeathers. Between the feather circles lay four long poles, longer than lodgepoles, pointing from the fire like rays from the sun, to each of the four sacred directions.